1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a case database management system and method, and in particular to a case database management system and method capable of maintaining high quality case information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-284846 discloses a diagnostic support system which is configured such that a case image can be registered from a client terminal of each medical facility into a medical database via a database server; the registered case image can be retrieved or referred to at the client terminal of each medical facility; and the case images registered in the medical database can be shared by each medical facility.
In such a diagnostic support system, the case image is recorded by being related to information about a bank account opened by a provider of the case image before the case image provided from each medical facility is registered in a case database. Each time the case image is used, the number of uses is counted to calculate the amount of money according to the number of uses of the case image every predetermined period, and the calculated amount of money is automatically transferred to the bank account opened by the provider of the case image.
However, the system disclosed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-284846 has a problem in that although the amount of money according to the number of uses of a case image is transferred to the bank account of the provider of the case image, the system does not provide a method of evaluating whether the referred case image is useful to the user; the system does not provide a sufficient motivation to encourage the user to provide a higher quality case image; and the system cannot be easily used since the database contains wide range of mixes ranging from high quality case images to low quality case images.
In addition, the system has another problem in that the information provided to the user is focused on the image information (case image), and thus text-based case information such as a radiogram interpretation report is not provided, which is not useful enough for a diagnostic support.